Star cast for Winton film

Lucy Gibson Film EditorThe West Australian

Saturday, 8 September 2012 5:49AM

When it was announced this week that the movie adaptation of Tim Winton's The Riders will finally begin production, no one was more excited than the woman who has spent more than a decade trying to make it happen.

Australian expatriate Susie Brooks-Smith has been working on the screen adaptation of Winton's acclaimed novel about a man whose wife goes missing, ever since winning the rights to the book in 2000.

Now with a script, stellar cast - including WA actor Sam Worthington in the lead role - acclaimed director and team of heavyweight producers, The Riders will begin filming in Europe in February.

"I am so excited because this book has been in my head every day for the past 12 years," Sydney-born writer-producer Brooks-Smith said from her home in England.

The Riders centres on Australian expat Scully who is preparing for a new life in Northern Ireland with wife Jennifer and young daughter Billie.

His life is torn apart when he arrives at Belfast airport to meet them and finds only a silent Billie with no message from his missing wife. With Billie in tow, Scully goes on a life-changing journey in search of answers.

Brooks-Smith describes The Riders as "the Vegemite book - you either love it or you hate it, and most Aussies love it".

She fell in love with the novel after her sister gave her a copy in 2000.

Having written and produced a BBC documentary two years earlier called Mummy Doesn't Live Here Any More, which explored women who leave their children, she felt an immediate connection and won the bid to option the book.

But it was not until 2004 when acclaimed British producer Robert Fox (The Hours, Atonement) became attached to the project that things started to pick up pace.

Brooks-Smith says the finished screenplay goes further to answering some questions posed by the book. But she's keeping mum about whether she's changed the ending.

The cast of The Riders includes British heavyweights Timothy Spall and Charles Dance.

But, according to Brooks-Smith, Rockingham-born Worthington was the only man to play the tormented Scully.

"Sam, for Robert Fox and I, had always been Scully," she said.

"Way before Clash of the Titans, whenever we spoke about Scully it was always about Sam.

"He kind of is Scully. Scully's life is one-dimensional until he goes on this journey."

Funded by international and Australian sources, filming is set to begin in February in Korcula in Croatia and Budapest and is due for release in January 2014.

British company Stealth Media Group will introduce the title to international buyers during the Toronto International Film Fest- ival, which opened on Thursday.

"The potential for it to really become international is something that we have all really worked towards," Brooks-Smith said.